


Consummation

by entanglednow



Series: 13 Days of Halloween [12]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Burns, Fear, Fire, Horror, Impending Threat, Injury, Love, M/M, Magic, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Protective Crowley (Good Omens), Rituals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:49:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27279025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: They have always protected each other, and now they have to do it one more time.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: 13 Days of Halloween [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1977847
Comments: 72
Kudos: 219





	Consummation

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 'Magic' prompt, for the 13 Days of Halloween list of prompts, made by racketghost.
> 
> Details about the 'Injury' tag have been added at the bottom, to avoid spoilers.

The circle is seven feet wide.

Crowley would have liked it to be bigger. Bigger would have been better. But the basement is the only underground room for miles. This is the closest house to the epicentre, the closest place to where the ground is going to split apart and let destruction claw its way into the world. The primordial things that were banished with the first light, anathema to all life. A fact that the witch had seemed particularly unhappy to hear Aziraphale tell everyone, twice.

She'd burned Agnes's second book, she didn't get to have an opinion.

Aziraphale is helping Anathema and her friends draw out the circles and symbols they need on the basement floor, passing books back and forth. If Crowley concentrates he can hear the quiet drone of the angel's voice, doing what they've always done, watch over humanity, as best as they could.

Crowley had considered - just for a moment - asking Aziraphale to leave with him again. Now that it's just the both of them, now that they're something so much more together than they ever were apart. Crowley can finally reach a hand out to him, and have his fingers caught and squeezed. The thought of staying, of putting themselves in danger to save everything again, barely a dozen years after the first time. It shouldn't be their responsibility. It should be someone else's turn. 

They shouldn't always be the ones that have to stop everything from being torn apart.

But who's to say that the hungry things locked away will be content with one planet, that they won't spread outwards, consuming and destroying everything God had built. And since She doesn't seem inclined to come back and shore up the locks, it falls to them.

Their ties to Heaven and Hell are long broken, and both sides seem content to watch this chaos happen with a detached sort of amusement. Bastards the lot of them.

Crowley wishes the circle could be bigger. He wishes it could be miles bigger. Because they'll need to stand in it together.

The angel's keeping the holy water they need in an old fashioned milk churn that he'd reinforced personally. He'd refused to bring it anywhere near Crowley until he'd done a seemingly endless series of tests, tipping it sharply while it contained nothing but plain water. Then he'd insisted Crowley wear waders that came all the way up to his hips, and an apron, thick gloves. Crowley had protested, but he'd done so quietly and it was mostly for show. He knows the angel is afraid. Crowley is too, the idea of being near that much holy water terrifies him.

But not half as much as his part of the ritual. Because fire and water have to be in the circle together. They have to exist in the same place at the same time. Both sources of power touching, with them as a conduit. Crowley had told Aziraphale it wouldn't be a problem. He'd promised the angel would be safe. He'd make sure the angel would be safe.

He's still working on keeping that promise.

Hellfire is wild and unpredictable, it has a natural hunger for devastation, to consume and devour. It wants to be free, and it will core through anything in its path to do so. It's a disobedient thing, and very few containers on earth are capable of holding it safely. The smallest crack, the slightest weakness, and it would spill out and flow over everything with a vicious and terrifying joy.

But no container could hope to hold the amount they need.

_No container_.

And just like that the only possible solution becomes obvious.

There's only one thing for miles that can hold hellfire.

Crowley laces his hands together, cracks his knuckles loudly, then he raises one hand and snaps, acquiring one important item which he leaves on the side of the sink.

Hellfire is difficult to summon on earth, though everything pulled from Hell has the potential to burn with its unique infernal flavour. Hellfire doesn't just need fuel and oxygen to burn, it needs intent, it needs fury, it needs the will to destroy. 

The stream across Crowley's fingers starts small, a stretch of orange flame that curls and then expands, swirling and twisting into itself. The edges of it wash impossible heat across his skin, looking for something to consume. He sets his other hand above it, and that ball of flame becomes a slender column, rising and then splashing across his upper hand, now being fuelled by them both. Sparks scatter across Crowley's fingers as it seethes and twists, impatient and hungry to burn every surface it touches. He pulls it wider, lets it swell, watching the way it snaps and roils like a leashed thing in his grip.

Then he opens his mouth and he breathes it in.

It pours down his throat like liquid, eager for a new home, flowing into him as if it could curl around his ribs and warm him through the next thousand years. It may not be able to burn through him, but it's still an infernal flame inside his chest. It's a scorching, searing heat that seeks out every bit of oxygen in his lungs, and every cell it touches is burned and blackened and then made whole to burn anew.

It's excruciating, and Crowley clenches his teeth and holds his mouth shut while his whole body screams and scream as the hellfire rages inside him.

His face in the mirror is a barely contained mask of agony, the whites of his eyes burning to yellow, his skin glowing red-hot from the inside. He sags sharply, feeling the flame expand and stretch against his ribs, filling every space inside his chest. Until it discovers that it's trapped with nowhere to go, and it starts to thrash.

Crowley's hands reach desperately for the edge of the sink, gripping tight and squeezing until it cracks beneath his desperate hold. It reforms under his command, and he screams without letting even a wisp of that fire free, as the sink cracks and reforms, cracks and reforms. It has to stay inside him. It has to stay there until they're done. A single breath of flame, no matter what happens, will end his whole world.

He once drowned in a lake of sulphur. He burned like this before.

He can do it again.

Eventually Crowley straightens, and then slides his sunglasses over his burning eyes.

He lifts the small kit from the side of the sink, threads fishing line through the needle, then he puts the needle to his lower lip, and he starts to stitch.

**Author's Note:**

> Additional tags - Self-inflicted Injury, Internal Burns, Mouth Stitching


End file.
